We are in uncharted waters

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#16 : Wandavision

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first real extension into television could have gone horribly wrong – and, indeed, the shows that came afterwards prove that much is still to be mastered in that area – but WandaVision was a delight from start to finish. By basing each episode on a sitcom from a different era (for reasons that do make sense at the end, honest), this was Marvel reassuring us that it reveres television as much as it does comics and film. The most unexpected love letter of the year.

The second one on the list I've previously seen and I'm going to start by disagreeing with The Guardian on this - it was definitely not a "delight from start to finish".  At the start, it was a VERY confusing watch and completely unclear as to whether it was going to reward the effort of sticking with it, but there was just enough intrigue to keep me hanging in there (even though I still wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't going to turn out to be utter rubbish).

And well, I'd be lying if I didn't say it continued to be very confusing with most episodes featuring one or two surprising rug-pulls, but it was all very skilfully done and managed to wrap things up in a way that both made some sense, was pretty bonkers and left a lot of things open for future investigation (and spin-off series!).  The choice of using different sitcom formats throughout the season was an inspired one though - I can see it will have scared off the less devoted viewer although they probably wouldn't have enjoyed the later episodes either, so I guess all was good.  I would say that I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for your investigation into the MCU - you need prior knowledge in order to fight through the confusion.  And I'm certainly not going to try and give you that knowledge here.

Paul Bettany and Elisabeth Olsen (how have I only just learned she's the Olsen twins' sister?) deserve all the plaudits they got for what was really quite a lot of acting over all the episodes and Kathryn Hahn also deserves a mention for her role as the nosey neighbour - everyone else does a fine job, but they often appear to be as confused as I was.  The different sitcom format must have made shooting the whole thing a formidable challenge for everyone involved though, so they should all stand up and take a bow.  

Particularly worthy of praise is whichever writer came up with the line "What is grief, if not love persevering?" - that whole scene was just beautifully done.  Some concepts and ideas around grief are explored in surprising depth across the episodes (and you really didn't see it coming in the first half of the season).

It's certainly not for everyone (Mrs Reed is never going to enjoy it), but if you're a Marvel fan and gave up too soon, then maybe think about revisiting it?  I think it's worth it - even though I still wouldn't want to have to describe what I've seen (as you can probably tell from the above).

#15 - Much more enjoyable than I was expecting
#17 - A nicely nuanced series